Everyone of you with a garden knows that earthworms are very slow creatures. Of course there are many of them, but a single earthworm surely won't conquer the world. My math teacher always said "silly as an earthworm" when someone didn't know the answer of an algebraic puzzle. But maybe those earthworms have dreams of their own. Maybe they dream of conquering the world? And maybe there are also different tribes of earthworms that fight against each other for their dream...In Wormlord we can participate in these dreams with each player leading one tribe of earthworms.

At setup a 7x7 grid of grass tiles is built up. Bases in the colour of the earthworm tribe are placed at the edge of the board, and objectives in form of towers as far as possible away from the bases. There are multiple maps for various player numbers that excactly tells you where to place the bases and objectives. The rest of the tiles are plain grass tiles, but you can also add obstacles that prevents the worms from wandering through. To conquer the world, an earthworm tribe simply has to conquer three of the four objectives.

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You already learnt that Wormlord is a competitive game. But it is also a frantic realtime game. Each player gets a set of 15 earthworm strings in the colour of the tribe at the beginning. To conquer a space a player must form a knot in one of the strings and place this knot on an empty space adjacent to a space that is already occupied by an earthworm knot of the the same tribe (colour). At a command the game begins and the players begin to take strings of their tribe, make knots and place these knots on the game board until one player has occupied three of the objective spaces.

The faster you make the knots and place these on the game board, the higher your chances to win the game. But what happens if you face an adjacent space that is already occupied by an earthworm of one of your opponents? Well, in that case you fight against this earthworm and you are allowed to take the adjacent foreign earthworm, unknot it, and give it back as its owner. If you are fast enough, you can make a knot in one of your own earthworms after that, and place it on the now free space.

That's already all you have to know to play Wormlord. Far too simple, nearly a little bit silly and probably not the game you are looking for? SIT DOWN! tells us that the game is a children game. But I can assure you that the game also perfectly works with grown-ups. In my humble opinion it is definitely a party game. A filler of 5-10 minutes, there are seldom players who can bear it up longer than that. Yes, you must be fast and you have to knot and unknot all the time. I usually begin to bet who will give up first after the first minute. For giving up is something that often happens. But the players aren't frustrated, they usually want to play a revenge right after they gave up.

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Wormlord is not the typical board game. It is more a funny experience with mixed emotions among the players. Most players -like me- like the game a lot. But of course, if you are clumsy, you won't have a chance to win the game, and then even practice won't help you a lot. A game - not only for the children - that will conjures a smile on a lot of faces.